In the mid-70's I took a long backpacking trip across the Selway-Bitterrot Wilderness; 10 days and 110 miles. I had six pounds of excellent camera gear with me, nearly 10% of my total load (you count ounces on a trip like that). I took lots of photos. Just after the next Christmas, on the morning of New Year's Eve, the old log cabin I had just moved into on a ranch outside of Missoula, burned to the ground along with my Pentax and all my photos.

The following August I went on another backpack across the Frank Church River of No Return Widerness - 130 miles and 13 days. No camera.

Some forty years later I still have many memories of the second trip, but mostly only remember a few of the photos from the first.

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"You can't fix a problem until you understand what the problem is." Logtroll

My sister and I do a lot of genealogy research. In the late 80's we spent a week gathering records in the counties where our great grandparents' families were from, tracking down relatives, and finding tombstones in graveyards around Illinois. I photographed all of it. I had about 5 rolls of film from that trip when my camera kit was stolen. Even though it was a special camera to me, as it was the first one bought with my own money and got me through college when I was working as a stringer for local papers, it was the loss of the research that I never recovered from.

_________________________A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.

Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich